New Transformers History book (fiction): The Covenant of Primus

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The Idle Hands Blog brings us news of Transformers: The Covenant of Primus, a hardcover book from becker & mayer exploring the history of the Transformers civilization. Written by Justina Robson with 60 never seen before illustrations, some from the Hasbro archives and some newly commissioned pieces. The book comes in a special wall mountable Autobot symbol case that features three "transforming" sound effects that are activated as the interlocking pieces are separated to reveal a newly commissioned cover by our friend Ken Christiansen.

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From Seibertron

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The Covenant of Primus is the definitive in-world history of the Transformers. For the first time, it reveals the stories of the Thirteen Primes, the original Transformers. The narrative will also cover the golden age of Transformer civilization, the war between Optimus Prime and Megatron, and finally the present day on Earth. Sixty never-before-seen illustrations, 20 commissioned just for this book, bring these epic events to life.

The hardcover book will be housed in a custom case shaped like the Autobot emblem. The classic mechanical “transforming” sound is triggered when the reader pulls open the three segments of the case.

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176 pages and is priced at US $99.00. You'll probably need to order online or from a bookshop.

Pretty expensive for a book of new fiction in a fancy box. I'm hoping there's a non-fancy box version coming too. Maybe we'll get it at Target like we did with the Vault book?

Looks the book mostly ties into TF:Prime and I guess the "Aligned" continuity when it says "definitive in-world history of the Transformers" (and probably ignores the current IDW books, Marvel G1, Sunbow G1, the Movieverse, etc I do wish Hasbro would stop trying to convince us that there's only one continuity these days)

I guess this list is of interest, but personally the possibly Mythical beings Cyclonus described in the MTMTE Annual are more interesting figures to me.

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This book also reveals all of the original thirteen Primes:

Prima
Vector Prime
Onyx Prime
Alpha Trion
Micronus Prime
Alchemist Prime
Solus Prime
Nexus Prime
Amalgamous Prime
Quintus Prime
Liege Maximo
Megatronus
The Thirteenth Prime

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Book is to be released December 3rd, which is a bit of a wait.

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Originally Posted by Paulbot

Looks the book mostly ties into TF:Prime and I guess the "Aligned" continuity when it says "definitive in-world history of the Transformers" (and probably ignores the current IDW books, Marvel G1, Sunbow G1, the Movieverse, etc I do wish Hasbro would stop trying to convince us that there's only one continuity these days)

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Yeah, this is the "current" continuity that Aaron Archer and Co sat down and plotted out about eight years ago, to cover about a decade of Transformers universe outside of the Movie Universe.... covering TFPrime, WFC/WFC, Novels and Rescue Bots. With TFPrime winding up, it's a bit strange that they've waited this long to release something like this. Even if they were still making up the names and details just this year, there was a lot of stuff already out there that they could have put in a book already.
Over several Botcons, Hasbro were revealing a Prime or two, so I guess it is good to finally know them all.

I'd be interested in picking up a copy to thumb through, but the price is a killer, so I too am hoping for a cheaper version.

The net is rife with speculation about who the mystical 13th Prime could be, but reading through the 16-odd pages of discussion on TFW2005 already, people are showing just how little they know about the Aligned continuity. I'm solely a BW fan and I know more than these TF: Prime fans.

I must say I don't enjoy the fact that Liege Maximo is so blatantly modeled on Loki from Avengers.

The idea of the 13 I can get behind, but the inclusion of charcters such as Onyx Prime (the first animal Transformer) and Miniconus Prime (the first Mini-Con Transformer) is pure absurdity. Why couldn't the Transformers race simply have evolved into forms such as animalistic bodies or smaller bodies in the umpteen millions of years they've been around? That's always ikred me.

Yeah... it kinda cheapens the point of creating those concepts out of necessity if they were always over the millions of years. But then, this is a new universe, separate from Gen1/BW... and I guess we've seen in the WFC/FOC games both of those types of Cybertronians, which was in the past. So maybe in Aligned, these concepts have always been around since the beginning.

Wow.

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Originally Posted by Verno

The net is rife with speculation about who the mystical 13th Prime could be, but reading through the 16-odd pages of discussion on TFW2005 already, people are showing just how little they know about the Aligned continuity. I'm solely a BW fan and I know more than these TF: Prime fans.

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The Thirteen Primes are multiversal singularities, so they're no more Aligned than any other Transformers continuity.

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Originally Posted by griffin

Yeah... it kinda cheapens the point of creating those concepts out of necessity if they were always over the millions of years. [...] and I guess we've seen in the WFC/FOC games both of those types of Cybertronians, which was in the past. So maybe in Aligned, these concepts have always been around since the beginning

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My problem is that the first Cybertronians (as opposed to The 13) werecreated some 14 million years ago, roughly? And the Golden Age starts around 10 million years ago or so? 4 million years is plenty of time for robotic organisms to evolve into animalistic forms, smaller forms and combiners etc... They don't need a 'god' of each.

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Originally Posted by griffin

But then, this is a new universe, separate from Gen1/BW...

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But is it really separate?! Hasbro have made it pretty clear that this origin story, the Aligned Origin story, is the be-all and end-all of Origin stories. This is how every universe in the multiverse got started, because this is how the multiverse got started.

I dislike the totalitarian nature of Hasbro's quest to definitively answer the question of the Transformers true origins. By making The 13 multiversal singularities, it means that the Aligned origin story has to be applied to every other universe, including the G1 and BW universes. I dislike this a lot.

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Originally Posted by Sky Shadow

The Thirteen Primes are multiversal singularities, so they're no more Aligned than any other Transformers continuity.

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But this book (and all the revelations within) are being released as part of Hasbro's decade-long push of the Aligned story.

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Originally Posted by Verno

But this book (and all the revelations within) are being released as part of Hasbro's decade-long push of the Aligned story.

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Three years is seven years short of a decade, and pretty much every one of these concepts originated in Beast Wars/G1/G2/Universe/BayMovie/3H/FunPub/Armada and Cybertron. It's noteworthy that you have an issue with this book, but the Aligned continuity isn't to blame.

I want a copy

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Originally Posted by Verno

I'd be interested in picking up a copy to thumb through, but the price is a killer, so I too am hoping for a cheaper version.

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Might be a good title to buy the Kindle version of, if its available through Amazon. It might also be the only way of reading it tis year, given the publication date.